The Steel Guitar Forum

My backup computer, DELL Dimensions E510.......has suffered a serious glitch.

The POWER BUTTON on the front, has an amber light blinking behind it and will not start the machine when depressed. You can hear no sounds of a fan, hummming or clattering when it is turned on in the normal fashion.

Would that likely suggest the POWER UNIT has failed?

I have an E510 and used to do a lot of support on the Dell forum. 99% of the time a flashing amber power light on an E510 is a power supply failure. There has been a relatively large number of E510 (and identical Dimension 5150) power supply failure.

Fortunately, the E510 uses a standard ATX style power supply and not a custom Dell model. Two suggestions, (1) do not buy a "cheap" power supply as they tend to have poor DC power regulation and they are overrated (watts). (2) buy a "modular" type power supply as this type eliminates a lot of unused power lead clutter that you have to stuff inside the case.

In addition, you need a minimum of a 350 watt (400 is better) power supply. The E510 comes with a 310 watt but Dell underrates their power supplies so the 310 is more like a 350 to 400 watt power supply.

Here is an example of a modular power supply and one that would work in the E510. Power Supply

Also, here is the Dell manual and how to replace the power supply. Dell Manual

I certainly appreciate your prompt and informational response. Many thanks to you.

The way to check a power supply

Take the cover off and using a volt meter
find a plug that is open.. usually one that
plugs into a hard drive and check that you are getting above 9v thru it.. somewhere between 9 and 12 is fine.

here is a good article on it

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lea ... ms/1041735

Paul Gates Jr.
Marrs D10

There is no sure way to check a power supply other than to replace it with a known good supply. Just checking one voltage does not guarantee the rest of the voltages are correct. Same way a power supply tester does not check the power supply under load; a power supply may show proper voltages with no load, but under load the voltages (or a voltage) may not be correct or be regulated.

In the case of the subject Dimension E510 power supply there is a couple of capacitors in the power supply that fail and thus the flashing amber power indicator light on the front of the PC tower. We have seen over 300 posts on the Dell forum about this and all except two were power supplies. One was a defective motherboard and another was a shorted pin on a USB jack (apparently a voltage that was shorted and thus causing the power supply to indicate failure).

(I've only been working in computer repair since the mid 60's).